Autonomous Driving System Driver Awareness Control

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Solution Overview

Problem

During autonomous driving, vehicles with low-awareness drivers struggle to respond to operation or monitoring requests from the autonomous driving system, leading to potential safety issues and increased need for driver intervention.

Innovation Solution

The autonomous driving system adjusts its vehicle behavior control to increase predictability and safety margins for surrounding vehicles, reduces potential collision risks, and prioritizes emergency stop easiness by modifying parameters such as target acceleration, deceleration, lane change timing, and inter-vehicle distance based on the driver's awareness level.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If the autonomous driving system requests operation or monitoring from the driver, then the driver's awareness is utilized for safety, but the driver cannot respond timely when awareness level is low

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedriver response reliabilityVSAvoiddriver response time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by adjusting vehicle behavior parameters (acceleration, deceleration, lane change timing) in advance when low awareness is detected, before the driver needs to respond, thereby preventing situations that would require urgent driver intervention

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The autonomous driving system acts as an intermediary between the low-awareness driver and the driving environment, mediating by adjusting vehicle behavior to be more predictable and reducing the need for direct driver intervention

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Productivity

If the vehicle behaves aggressively to improve efficiency, then productivity increases, but predictability for surrounding vehicles decreases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedriving efficiencyVSAvoidbehavior predictability

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system changes behavioral parameters (acceleration, deceleration, lane change timing) based on driver awareness level, making the vehicle more conservative and predictable when the driver has low awareness, while maintaining efficiency through optimized parameter selection

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

3Productivity

If the vehicle reduces safety margins to increase speed, then productivity improves, but collision risk increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvevehicle speedVSAvoidcollision risk

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The system dynamically adjusts safety parameters (target acceleration, deceleration, inter-vehicle distance) based on real-time driver awareness level, creating a dynamic balance between productivity and safety that adapts to the driver's current state

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

Data Source

PatentUS11014572B2Autonomous driving system

Publication Date: 2021.05.25 TOYOTA JIDOSHA KK

AI summary

An autonomous driving system mounted on a vehicle includes: a vehicle behavior control device configured to perform vehicle behavior control that controls behavior of the vehicle; and an awareness level calculation device configured to calculate an awareness level of a driver of the vehicle. A low awareness state is a state where the awareness level is lower than a normal state. The vehicle behavior control device performs the vehicle behavior control such that another vehicle around the vehicle predicts or recognizes the behavior of the vehicle more easily in a case of the low awareness state than in a case of the normal state.